Oceano: California’s Most Embarassing Beach
Ed. Note: Bob Sumner and his wife Nickie only sought a quiet beach experience. Instead they were treated to one of California’s appalling open secrets: thousands of vechicles destroying sensitive coastal resources and endangered species night and day, day after day, at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area. ODSVRA, which for years has been considered a rules and nature free environmental destruction area by California Dept. of State Parks, is the most regrettable, obnoxious beach experience in the state.
And as reported by Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas, the situation isn’t about to change soon. Just this week Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his plan to eliminate California Dept. State Parks and close nearly all state parks — EXCEPT ODSVRA. That is wat it has come to: State parks dedicated to nature and pollution free recreation are to be shuttered while ODSVRA, dedicated to destruction of the coast, killing off endangered species and heating the planet, will go on business as usual.
Family who had ‘nightmare’ vacation near Pier Avenue in Oceano told to go someplace else next time
Bob Cuddy – San Luis Obispo Tribune
Beach days are here,and here’s a swift kick in the pail and shovel from a top coastal protector to those looking for a family vacation experience near Pier Avenue in Oceano:
Go someplace else. The vehicles have taken over. “Without intending to be cavalier about your concerns … I suggest you find another area for your next vacation,” Peter Douglas, executive director of the California Coastal Commission, wrote in a letter to a couple from San Jose who had a nightmare experience at the beach.
“P.S.,” Douglas added, “unfortunately, I have given this same advice to others who have had similar reactions and experiences to yours.”
The house Bob and Nickie Sumner rented in Oceano is less than a block from the Pier Avenue entrance to the Oceano Dunes. Instead of peace and quiet, they spent a week watching vehicles stream by on the beach. Tribune photo by Joe Johnston
The fact that the beach south of Pier Avenue has become a highway may be old news to Douglas, but to Bob and Nickie Sumner of San Jose, it was a revelation.
The Sumners had been coming to Pismo Beach every May and December for 12 years, staying at a hotel. This year, with the hotel unwilling to accommodate three small dogs they wanted to walk, they rented a house on Oceano’s Strand.
“What we thought to be a restful vacation turned … very stressful and horrible,” they wrote Douglas. The portion of beach the Sumners’ rental house fronted is a mile-long approach to the spot across Arroyo Grande Creek where off-roaders ride their off-highway vehicles (OHVs) in the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreational Area.
Now, no rational person seeking peace and quiet would vacation at the ATV portion of this park. It is not about solitude or mystical bonding with nature; it is about noise and speed and power and a shared family love of same.
It is a subculture all its own, a perfectly legitimate one, but it is different from the subculture of other beach-goers, including the Sumners.
And so there is noise down there. But what about the approach to the Vroom-Vroom Dunes? Is restfulness there, as the Sumners expected?
Here’s a little something from a state Department of Parks and Recreation brochure.
The park “affords ample recreational opportunities for beach activities, including aquatic sports, picnicking, fishing, and clamming, photography, horseback riding and camping.”
Swallowing that, and following up on their love of the general area, the Sumners rented their house on the Strand. “We walked in the door of this modest home to a million-dollar view of the dunes and ocean,” they wrote Douglas. “Glass windows from top to bottom facing the dunes and water. We were so excited to be there.”
“It was spectacular, for about 3 minutes,” they added.
“That’s when we saw trucks! Big trucks, and cruisers and motor homes and four-wheel-drives and advertising trucks selling their goods (ATVs, surf-sailing and kayaking).
“The stream of vehicles and motor homes was nonstop from the time we arrived on a Friday to the day we left the following Thursday. It reminded us of ‘Hot August Night’ in Reno and Napa but this lasted a whole week (not just a weekend).”
The letter, and one later to the county Board of Supervisors, went on in this vein. The Sumners couldn’t walk their dogs; they had to carry them to the beach because of traffic. They got little or no sleep. There was trash and broken glass.
“It’s like a slum area,” Nickie Sumner told The Tribune.
As appalled as they were with their vacation-that-wasn’t (“I needed another vacation just from our visit at Oceano!” Nickie Sumner wrote), they were also indignant with the Douglas reply.
Douglas laid it out for them in straightforward language. He said Oceano Dunes is an “off-road recreational vehicle area designated by state law that neither the county nor the Coastal Commission can manage or control.”
In a conversation with The Tribune, Douglas elaborated.
He said the Coastal Commission does not have jurisdiction over activities at the Dunes, and he is frustrated about that. However, bowing to reality, he said it probably is best that people whose vacation goals are like those of the Sumners go someplace else.
“They’re not compatible uses,” he said. “You’re taking a real risk.”
Ultimately, he said “scaling back the number of vehicles, and how that park is used, is a political issue.”
In other words, all the letters in the world from people like the Sumners aren’t going to change anything at the Strand and points south.
That will have to happen in Sacramento and will entail the Sumners and allies acquiring as much political clout as the off-road lobby and the companies that make and sell their vehicles.
Meanwhile, as the sages say, it is what it is. There’s a short stretch where “normal” beach activities can occur if you go north at Pier Avenue. But not if you go south.
While ATVs can’t operate on the stretch south of Pier Avenue, the cars that tow them can.
That is a de facto occupation of the beach.
It would be nice if the people who draw up the brochures for the Oceano Dunes would, as Douglas did, just come right out and say that. “If you’re looking to swim, fish, or romp on the beach, scram. This park and its environs belong to off-roaders.”
As to the Sumners, they say they don’t want OHVs banned, they just want some controls.
“Our hope is that there is some improvement in safety for people in Oceano. It could be a beautiful and wonderful place to visit if you just took care of it,” they wrote. Sumner told The Tribune he would be happy if the state moved the entrance kiosk down the beach away from Oceano, for openers.
There have been some attempts at control, but as the Sumners’ experience showed, they have not been sufficient. As one who loves solitude and quiet, I sympathize with them. But Douglas told them the truth. If you want things to change, get political.